Portrait
by Fox J Darrell-Logan
Summary: Duncan walks in on Methos in a precious moment NON-SLASH!!


Disclaimers: Imagine the usual. You can't? Okay. None of the characters active in or alluded to in this story belong to me. If they did, they'd still be on television every day, a few times a day. As it is I'm only borrowing them briefly to play with, since they have nothing really better to do lately.  
  
Methos was reclining on the comfortable dark couch in his home, a set of in-ear headphones turned up as loud as possible blocking out the outside world as he allowed the thin mechanical pencil in his hand to roam over the paper, riding across the minuscule bumps to form shade, darkness, contrast, slowly melding into an image. Duncan watched from behind him, either ignored or truly not noticed as the world's oldest immortal fell into the sad melody of the song to which he was listening. His head moved and swayed almost imperceptibly with the beats, his eyes on some faraway memory as the paper turned gradually darker with each stroke of Methos' hand. Duncan tried to crane his neck to make sense of the image on the paper, but it eluded him, and if he came any closer, the world's oldest man would sense him for sure. There was a look of concentration on Methos' face as his eyes belied the daydream he was embroiled in. Some memory of the past, some tidbit of knowledge that only he would ever, could ever, know. Methos had said once that it was good to be a myth, but with his eyes he wished for someone to share everything with. Someone who would not grow old and die as his   
numerous wives had. Sixty-eight. Sixty-eight times he had cared enough about a mortal woman to fall in love with and marry her. Sixty-eight times he had watched his love fade into old age and die. Sixty-eight times he'd had his heart broken. Then Alexa had come. He had been alive then. So much more alive than Mac had ever seen him before. A smile had come more readily to his lips around her, and was more reluctant to fade. His dark eyes had glowed and shimmered with a fire and passion for life that Mac had never noticed there before. He moved with more grace and spoke with more animation. His entire being had seemed to lift around her. They had left for their tour of the world with smiles on their faces, and laughter sitting like some golden stringed instrument in the air, waiting for someone to play it. Methos had laughed easily, a deep, resonant, almost bottomless sound that reminded you of the lung capacity of a man who vacationed in Katmandu regularly, and perhaps . . . the capacity of his heart. When Methos had returned alone, for the crystal that Rebecca had owned, Mac had looked into his face and seen a man always on the verge of tears, constantly   
looking around for some place to be alone and try to pull himself together. Amanda had told him about her encounter with him at the train tracks, and Mac had wanted to cry for his friend. You try being her!! You think we have it bad, going into battle knowing that one of use is going to die! You try being Her! Living for a year, waking each morning, knowing that no matter what tricks you have up your sleeve, no matter how much you train and prepare, you'll LOSE!! The words of a man watching his heart ripping in two, trying to hold on to both sides to keep it together. He had cried on Amanda's shoulder   
that night, letting loose a year's worth of pain and frustration. Everyone involved knew that he would have traded places with her gladly, taken on her pain and her anguish if he could. He had buried her in Paris, and made his home there, near the cemetery where she was interred. He knew that she had loved Santorini, would have liked to have been buried there, but he couldn't bear the thought of her so far away from him. But she had given him a reason and a will to live when he had been running out of reasons. If I died, who would remember Alexa? He had reminded Mac once. This from the same man who had slaughtered thousands, tens of thousands, by his own admission, part of Mac's mind said to him. Or perhaps it was one of his Quickenings talking. Cassandra had fostered so much hatred for this man. Hated him enough   
to try to get Mac to kill him for her. She had been confused after Bordeaux. She couldn't figure out why he had fought for her, why he had killed the only member of the group that he had liked. Mac had wondered as well for a brief time, then discovered the answer staring him straight in the face. Methos had loved Cassandra. He had killed his brother for the woman he loved. The only one he still had a chance to beg forgiveness of. But he would never beg. He would watch her from the corner of his eye as she danced like a moth to Duncan's flame. He would lie to her face to help her to realize   
what Mac had guessed, but Cassandra, with all her second sight, was totally blind to. After all, if he loved her so much, why would he allow Kronos to take her away from him? I heard her escaping, and I let her go. She must have died hundreds of times in that desert, of hunger, of thirst, of heat, of cold. But she was free. There had been a wistful tinge to his voice, one that bespoke his own wish to be free. He had ridden with the Horsemen for a thousand years. How many of those centuries had been spent trying to escape? How many times had he tried? Kronos had stabbed him through the   
heart, kidnapped him and taken him to the submarine station that had been their temporary base. Was it because he knew that Brother Methos would not have come voluntarily? What else had he done to Methos while they were   
searching for Silas and Caspian? What had he held over his head to keep him there? Had it been Cassandra? Methos shifted in his seat to more of a slouch, if that was possible, and Mac could see some of what was taking shape on the   
paper in front of the world's oldest man. All he could see was an eye. A woman's eye, in great detail. Every tiny capillary was there in intricate lines and shadows. Shadows in indistinct shapes floated in the periphery. Of course, all he could see was one corner of the paper.   
"Something interesting, Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod?" Methos said in his deep, ducky voice, and Mac jumped, then had the decency to blush slightly at being caught staring over Methos' shoulder. The older man   
turned around to face Mac, small smudges of graphite decorating his face where he'd shaded the picture then absently touched his own face. Mac smiled.  
"Can I see?" he inquired tentatively. Methos frowned for a moment, studied the sketchbook in his hands, then handed it over. MacLeod was speechless for a moment. The eye was accompanied by another, almost recognizable unto themselves. They were hooded, and seemed to hold great secrets in their depths. Beneath the eyes was, at first glance, a nose. Upon further inspection, however, it materialized with the shadows around it into a horse and tall, lean rider, rising up out of the shadows like the block in an eight ball. The mouth was composed of a couple making   
love, the woman on top, her hair falling around her. The hair around this strange face was made up of swords, whips, axes, chains . . . In one corner of the top of the page, seemingly imposed over a corner of the face which filled the   
page was a silhouette of a man with long hair held back in a ponytail, holding a katana, light streaming from behind him, his face mostly in shadows. It was MacLeod. In the other corner, with the same light backdrop, was a shorter, more stout man, standing straight-legged, leaning on a cane. Joe. In another corner was a woman with an axe raised over her head. From the tilt of her head, she was looking toward the ground. Cassandra. In the opposite corner was a woman who sat in a wooden chair. Even in the drawing it seemed that there was something tragic about her in the way that she was sitting instead   
of standing, that her head was bent and shoulders curved instead of straight and upright. It was Alexa, as she had been later in her illness, Mac guessed. He flipped through the other pages, some yellowed with age. Almost all were some sort of collage like the one he'd watched Methos draw. Various scenes and objects used, but always the same face created by them. Always the stern, unforgiving eyes were central, then the slim nose and tight-lipped mouth. Cassandra. Always her face. The one woman he would never be able to forget, who would never be able to forget him. The other sketches were of people. They looked like photographs, every one of them good enough to make you wonder if they were. Joe laughing from behind his bar; from a side view in a car somewhere; walking down a street. Always laughing, always   
smiling. Mac recognized himself, standing stern and judging; in the light from an open window; sitting on a stool in Joe's bar brooding. Alexa laughing at some joke; sitting on a park bench. Alexa smiling at something. Alexa grinning as she   
drew him in her own sketchbook. Alexa from the back, drawing a small hummingbird. Alexa's face, full of wonder at something. Then Alexa, lying weak and frail in her hospital bed, dying, looking ashen and the opposite of alive.   
Portraits of several women, all smiling gaily up from the page at the artist. Always happy, joyful, enjoying themselves immensely. Probably some of Methos' wives. Silas, playing with a small kitten he'd found, the creature swallowed up in his mammoth hands. Silas holding a tiny baby to his face, apparently cooing at it. The words 'Josef, First Immortal Infant I Encountered. Survived Fifty-eight years before I killed him out of pity.' written along the bottom of the page in flowing script. Obviously added well after it was drawn. Or perhaps Methos just remembered it that well. He handed the book back to Methos, who went into another room and squirreled the book away somewhere he deemed 'safe'.   
"You're very talented," Mac remarked. Methos shrugged.  
"Over five thousand years, you have a great deal of dead time to perfect things. Pardon the expression." He picked up a remote from a small arsenal of them on the table beside the couch and turned the television on to Golf.   
"So, you going to get us a beer, or do I have to get it myself?" Mac shook his head and went into the kitchen. Arguing with the world's oldest immortal was a distinct waste of time. You always lost. 


End file.
